[TechniSol]

leftright, as has been pointed out to me a multitude of times, most programmers don't get to choose where their efforts will be expended. OTOH, it's always been understood to me that the idea was to produce a product that works as designed first, then embellish, if at all. I suppose one must accept the former as a working condition in a shop with, in my mind, too many cooks in the soup(ie, group project).

A Cynic might make the observation that once most core backbone and messaging services have been implemented in a design, that modularization should handle a lot of the other messy changes that might be made, however, those modules affected must be tended to if I/O specs must needs be changed. If you're maintaining or fixing things, and you can't directly fix other modules when changes ripple through and affect them then you must wait on other's resources to become available. This is why every team should have a guy, guys, gal, or gals as may be the case, that can wear any hat and work on whatever needs doing after the initial push is over and code becomes less Frankenstein's Monster and more Frankenfurter... Someone who can switch layers at will, or more accurately negotiate various levels of abstraction, and traverse through the levels from microscopic to full Gestalt. Most of my projects have been one man shows, often designing hardware & software, engineering, programming, implementing, all the way through, etc., or very small teams, so the importance of this ability is paramount for me, maybe not so much for others. There is no substitute for someone, or a small group, that can step in and gets a product from all angles and can work on any level required. Sadly, this does not seem to be as common as I had thought from my experiences. Too many "Chiefs"(managers) these days, too few, if I may be pardoned the colloquialism, "Indians". There should be at least one Chief who gets it all and takes the responsibility to run along behind and clean up all the leavings once the rest move on.

This should be done prior to embellishment, and must be done again at each stage to clean up what falls by the wayside. It takes time, costs money and involves a lot of testing.